70
as was particularly noticeable at Halle, has now reached the last obstacle, the Menshevik barrier. When German Menshevism is destroyed root and branch—and we seem to be pretty near that time—then the road will be clear, then the mighty organisation which the German working class possesses will not be a chain on the feet of the workers, but a lever by the aid of which the German working class will overturn bourgeois Germany and twist the neck of the German bourgeoisie.
The Independent Party is the chief labour party in Germany—it is the backbone of proletarian Germany. But up to now this party united both proletarian and Menshevik elements. It is because the Menshevik elements were tolerated in that party and were even guiding it that the party was paralysed all the time. It could not move a single step forward. At the crucial moment, when the working class was eager for the fight, the Menshevik wing of the Independents and the Right leaders put a drag on the wheel and endeavoured to restrain the whole labour movement. We in Russia are sometimes unable to understand how a proletarian party could tolerate leaders such as Messrs Crispien, Dittmann, and Hilferding, who remind us so vividly of that rabble which at one time "ruled" in Petrograd—Tseretelli, Dan, Tchernov, Tchkheidze, etc. No wonder! We suffered the same for many years, and it is not long since we have freed ourselves. We too were fettered to the Mensheviks, like convicts to their trucks, because we belonged to the same party. Did not the Mensheviks in 1905 betray us on every occasion? Did not the Mensheviks and the of the first revolution? Did they not betray us in 1905 during the first Moscow rising, and did they then not sermonise, "You should not have, taken up arms"? What did it mean at the time? It meant to submit to the Tsar's knout! Did not we hear the Mensheviks say in 1907–1908: "We must not do anything illegal; let us dissolve the party, let us abolish our past, compromise with the cadets and become 'respectable' people"? Were we not witnesses at the beginning of the war to the fact that Mensheviks appealed to the people to support the war and the Tsar? And did not the Mensheviks and Kerensky sell themselves outright to the Allies at the beginning of 1917? All this happened in Russia, and quite recently too.
